REVIEWS IN BRIEF / Looking for Spinoza

The progression in Antonio Damasio's three books -- from the best-selling "Descartes' Error" in 1995 to the best-selling "The Feeling of What Happens" in 1999 to this one, "Looking for Spinoza" -- is in two areas. One is the findings and theories based on his neurological research (in the laboratory with Hanna Damasio and other colleagues, and from treating patients). The other is the profound implications of that research that go far beyond brain science, which he expresses through considering the opposing philosophical views of Rene Descartes and Benedictus Spinoza.

Damasio's new book is the culmination of these parallel explorations and their relationships. In his neuroscience, what were tentative ideas have become firm conclusions, leading to a triumphant celebration of Spinoza's derided and neglected insights on the interdependence of feeling and thinking, of body and mind, and an even stronger rejection of Descartes' insistence on their hierarchical separation, a view that has dominated Western thought for centuries.

The enthusiastic sections on Spinoza's complicated life and prescient thought are personal in tone, projecting a sophisticated and earnest modesty that may soften the revolutionary implications of this trilogy and especially this book. For in clear, accessible and at times eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining nothing less than a new vision of the human soul, integrating body and mind, thought and feeling, individual survival and altruism, humanity and nature, ethics and evolution. What Descartes had torn asunder, Damasio has returned to wholeness, with the kind of evidence that scientists as well as philosophers must take seriously. Spinoza would be proud.